Trump Kicks Off Midterm Rally Schedule With Visits To Trump-Loving Safe Spaces
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WASHINGTON ― Just weeks after claiming he would visit every House district in play for the coming midterm elections, President Donald Trump is kicking off his pre-election rallies with visits to Trump-loving safe spaces hundreds of miles from the nearest toss-up race.
Trump will begin with a visit to Durant, Oklahoma, Thursday evening, followed by a rally in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday. He won Oklahoma by 34 percentage points in 2024 and Alabama by 31 points.
After a Saturday trip to Ohio, which does have a competitive Senate race, Trump will hit Nebraska on Monday, another state he won by a blowout, 21-point margin two years ago.
Stuart Stevens, a former top Republican consultant who helped run the 2000 and 2004 successful George W. Bush campaigns, said there’s no mystery to Trump’s venue choices. “I don’t think it’s complicated. No one wants him,” he said of Trump, who is now a historically unpopular president thanks to his trade war against the world and his actual war against Iran.
“The vital swing states of Alabama and Oklahoma,” joked longtime Florida Republican consultant-turned-Trump critic Rick Wilson. “It’s a sign of how deeply unpopular Trump is in the rest of the country and those states he’s barely above water. It’s all about his delicate ego and not about political outcomes.”
President Donald Trump speaks during a Hispanic Heritage Month event in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
Alex Brandon via Associated Press
At a Sept. 2 gathering of Republican lawmakers in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said there were some three dozen competitive House races across the country and that he would be visiting them all. “It’s all about 35 races,” he said. “I’m going to go to every one of those 35 places, and we’re going to see if we can get everyone elected.”
He repeated that pledge a week later at his “Trump-a-palooza” midterm rally in Dallas: “I’m going to go to every one of those states for congressmen and senators.”
At least in his first set of rallies, though, he has chosen instead places where the locals are more likely to still adore him.
Durant is a solid 350 miles, a five-and-a-half-hour drive, from the closest “toss-up” House seat, neighboring Texas’ 15th Congressional District, said J. Miles Coleman, an analyst with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Similarly, the closest toss-up seat to Mobile, Alabama, is the 11th District of North Carolina, Coleman said, a good 450 miles to the northeast. The nearest toss-up seat to Grand Island, Nebraska, is Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, 180 miles away. (Nebraska’s GOP-controlled 2nd District in Omaha is now seen as very likely to flip to Democratic control.)
Only on his Saturday stop in Vandalia, Ohio, is there a competitive House seat relatively close by: the 9th District, which is only 75 miles away, Coleman said. There’s also a marquee Senate race in the state between incumbent Republican Jon Husted ― who has told a Cleveland news outlet that he will be attending ― and Democrat Sherrod Brown.
One Republican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump would, in fact, go to battleground states and districts soon enough. “These two rallies at the start are kind of outliers,” the official said. “He will be spending a lot of time in battleground races.”
Trump will not be going to districts where his presence would, on balance, hurt the Republican candidate running, the official added: “They’re not going to send the president to anyplace that’s not helpful.”
How Trump might react to that analysis, however, is unclear. After South Florida Republican congresswoman Maria Salazar released an ad criticizing Trump for his aggressive immigration crackdown in her district, Trump responded with a string of attacks against her on his social media platform. And when Florida’s GOP nominee for governor, Byron Donalds, scrubbed his website of most of the mentions of Trump, the president responded with a lengthy post calling it fake news and claiming he would stage rallies for Donalds.
In any case, said one former Trump campaign official on condition of anonymity, finding places where Trump’s presence is helpful is not going to be easy: “He’s underwater nearly everywhere.”
Republicans have long said their midterms strategy would center, in large part, around using Trump to encourage turnout among low-propensity voters who have shown up in the past when Trump is on the ballot but not for other Republicans.
Polling, however, indicates many of those voters now have a significantly lower opinion of Trump than they did in 2024, with the president’s image battered by a war with Iran and his administration’s reluctance to release files from the federal investigation into billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Nonetheless, Trump claimed this week that GOP candidates all want him to come to their states and districts. “They all want me to go, I’m one person. They all want me to go campaign,” he told reporters at the White House Tuesday.
A day earlier, when asked why Republicans around the country, including many in areas he won easily two years ago, are now facing tough races, Trump denied the premise of the question. “First of all, the polls are fake,” he said.
And on Wednesday, Trump said he was starting his rally tour because other Republicans were not sufficiently talking up what a great job he has done since returning to office. “I‘m going out because nobody’s selling it. I’m doing ― we’re doing an extremely poor job of promotion and an extremely great job of running the country,” he said.
Natalie Baldassarre, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, emphasized how much more money Republicans have at their disposal than do Democrats.
“While Democrats squabble over the last two cents their party has to spare, the president is barnstorming the country, energizing our base, and supercharging Republican candidates in key races and beyond,” she said. “We have the resources to spend, and Republicans are full steam ahead to protect and expand our majorities.”
Republican consultant Rick Tyler, who worked on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the most obvious explanation for Trump’s rally schedule is almost certainly the correct one.
“The president’s travel schedule reflects his party’s willingness to be on stage with him,” he said. “His second term is effectively coming to a rapid close.”
NO SURRENDER — Ilhan Omar Fires Back at Donald Trump After Federal Agents Search Her Home
Ilhan Omar is refusing to back down after federal agents searched her Washington, D.C., home in a criminal investigation—an extraordinary development that has reignited her long-running confrontation with Donald Trump just weeks before the midterm elections.
The Minnesota Democrat responded with a defiant message: “I will not be silenced.” She accused the Trump administration of using federal law enforcement to target political opponents and described the search as another escalation in what she called a decade-long campaign of intimidation.
The statement immediately raised the political stakes. Omar is not simply disputing the circumstances surrounding the search; she is challenging the administration’s conduct and demanding that the public examine why federal agents took such a consequential step so close to an election.
But the central questions remain unresolved: What exactly are investigators looking for, what evidence supports the inquiry, and will the search trigger a broader confrontation between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration?
‘I Will Not Be Silenced’: Omar’s Defiant Response
On October 12, after news of the search emerged, Omar posted a response on social media that began with a brief reassurance: “I’m ok.”
She then delivered a much sharper political message, accusing the administration of targeting political enemies and weaponizing federal law enforcement.
“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns,” Omar wrote, describing the search as the latest escalation in what she characterized as political intimidation. She ended with a declaration that quickly became the defining line of her response: “I will not be silenced.”
Her congressional office issued a separate statement calling the search an “outrageous abuse of power” and an “unprecedented escalation” in the use of federal law enforcement against political opponents. The statement said Omar had done nothing wrong and argued that no president should be able to use the federal government to intimidate political adversaries.
Those are Omar’s allegations and her office’s position. The search itself was carried out under a judicially authorized warrant, according to the Justice Department. Whether investigators uncover evidence of wrongdoing—and whether the search was justified by the facts of the case—remains to be established.
What Happened at Omar’s Washington Home?
Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, searched Omar’s Washington residence early Monday, October 12.
The Justice Department confirmed that agents executed a search warrant authorized by a court as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation. Officials did not publicly disclose a complete account of the evidence being sought or all the details of the inquiry.
Reporting by CBS News and The Washington Post indicated that investigators were examining immigration paperwork dating back to Omar’s childhood. The documents reportedly involved paperwork completed by her late father when the family came to the United States as refugees from Somalia.
The details remain limited, and the reported focus of the investigation should not be confused with a finding of guilt. A search warrant authorizes investigators to look for specified evidence; it does not establish that the person whose home is searched committed a crime.
Omar has repeatedly rejected allegations against her and portrayed the renewed scrutiny as politically motivated. Her office’s statement following the search reiterated that she had done nothing wrong.
As of the latest reports, authorities had not publicly laid out a complete evidentiary case against the congresswoman. That leaves a critical distinction at the center of the story: the investigation is real, but its ultimate findings are not yet known.
Why the Timing Has Become a Political Flashpoint
The search took place less than a month before the November midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake. That timing has intensified questions from Democrats about whether the action could influence the political environment surrounding Omar’s reelection campaign.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats raised concerns about the search, while senior Democratic leaders condemned the action and questioned the use of federal power against a sitting member of Congress so close to an election.
The criticism centers on more than Omar’s personal dispute with Trump. It touches on a broader principle: federal law enforcement must be able to investigate potential crimes, but its decisions should be grounded in evidence and applied without improper political influence.
The Justice Department has confirmed the existence of a court-authorized search but has not publicly provided a full explanation of the investigative rationale. Without that information, it is not possible to establish from the public record alone whether the timing was politically motivated or driven by investigative necessities.
That uncertainty is likely to keep the controversy alive. Democrats are demanding answers about the decision and its timing, while the investigation itself remains ongoing.
A Long-Running Clash Between Omar and Trump
Omar has been one of Trump’s most prominent congressional critics. Their political conflict has repeatedly drawn national attention, with disputes involving immigration, national identity, federal enforcement and the congresswoman’s background.
Trump has frequently criticized Omar in public, while Omar has accused him of spreading false claims and using inflammatory rhetoric against her and the Somali American community.
In the days before the search, Omar had also criticized Trump’s rhetoric about Somali Americans. The latest federal action therefore arrived against the backdrop of an already bitter political relationship—not in isolation.
Still, a history of public hostility does not by itself prove that a federal investigation was politically directed. Establishing improper interference would require evidence about how the investigation was initiated, authorized and conducted.
That distinction matters because the controversy involves two separate questions: whether investigators have a legitimate basis to pursue the case, and whether the administration has handled the matter in a politically appropriate way.
Both questions deserve scrutiny, but neither should be treated as settled before the relevant evidence is available.
Democrats Demand Answers as the Investigation Continues
Omar’s response has been echoed by Democratic colleagues who say the search raises serious concerns about the use of federal power. Some have called for accountability and greater transparency about the investigation.
Their criticism is also shaped by the election calendar. A federal search involving a sitting member of Congress in the final weeks before voters head to the polls is certain to draw heightened political attention, even when authorities have a judicial warrant.
The administration’s position and the investigators’ evidence will be crucial to determining how the controversy develops. If officials disclose a clear evidentiary basis for the search, that information will help the public evaluate the government’s actions. If significant questions remain unanswered, pressure for congressional oversight may intensify.
For now, the public has only a partial picture of the investigation. Officials have confirmed a court-authorized search, but have not disclosed all the evidence or publicly established that Omar committed a crime.
What Happens Next for Ilhan Omar?
The immediate questions are whether investigators will release additional information, whether Omar or her representatives will provide further details, and whether congressional leaders will seek formal oversight of the search.
Omar has made her own position unmistakable: she intends to continue speaking out and views the search as an attempt to intimidate a political opponent. The Trump administration’s critics have embraced that interpretation, while the legal justification for the search must ultimately be evaluated through the evidence and applicable law.
The coming days could bring more details about the investigation, new statements from lawmakers and further debate over the role of federal law enforcement during an election season.
For now, the most defensible conclusion is also the most consequential: a federal search has triggered a major political confrontation, Omar has publicly challenged the administration’s motives, and key questions about the investigation remain unanswered.
Her “I will not be silenced” declaration has become a rallying cry for her response. Whether the dispute grows into a wider congressional battle will depend on what investigators reveal next—and whether the government can explain its actions in a way that withstands public and legal scrutiny.
